Downtown Toronto, its winter time and Absolute Tent and Event Services is stuffed to the rafters with everything required to make a party.  This place is a bonafide party bomb waiting to explode with tents and staging, folding chairs and tables, event lighting and so many other luxuries waiting to be delivered and assembled in backyards all over the Greater Toronto Area.  Kaboom its party time!

Just because its winter time is no excuse not to throw a party. This building is filled with heaters and insulated tents, snow blowers, troughs and buckets. Maybe we should have a made their photo contest a ‘winter parties’ theme?

Their building is huge and multi-faceted and worth visiting if you live in Toronto and you’re organizing an event. Tell them you’ve entered a photo on Lenzr and you may get 10% off…  maybe.

Here’s Laura, the Absolute blogger who is our eyes and ears inside this busy Toronto tent and party rentals house. She gives us the skinny on upcoming events, Hollywood film shoots, parades and even Toronto waterfront conditions from the perspective of a rentals house employee, which is kind of fascinating. The company does movies and big City of Toronto public occasions too, like Canada Day,  Woofstock and Gay Pride Parade  and so its possible she will have celebrity pictures and details about the assembly and clean-up of big urban bashes. Another interesting thing about Laura are the little glimpses we get into her daily life at the business, and how she struggles to improve her skills driving forklifts and

Backyard Party Events is for the little people who host their own good times at home. Every photographer worth his salt has party pictures and the ones we want to see will hopefully show off some residential geography and show off backyard BBQs, games and dancing under shady trees. Already there are shots of some rowdy kids and a whole of beer cans, but I think we can do better than that.

The prize for the Lenzr member that uploads the highest ranked picture is a spiffy new 10×10 Popup Tent, and $500 Gift Certificate * that must be spent at Absolute Tent and Event Services obviously. Laura is actually building the tent prize in the photo above and the Absolute blog will detail its specifics.

The first contest period has ended now, September 1st 2009 and three winners have been declared. These members will soon be contacted by Lenzr admin re:  delivery of prizes, testimonials, and perhaps even candid self portraits. It was a very succesful launch and there were so many photos uploaded to the index we wondered about adopting some kind of photo Inventory Software to keep track of all the submissions in all different categories, and indeed this might be something we consider licensing in the future. In the meantime,

Best Toronto Skyline had 46 photos submitted, including some amazing shots with lightning and ducks and vintage shots of the skyline that have all together gathered up over 2500 votes.

The first contest was sponsored by Lenzr.com and brought a lot of attention to the site. The prize is a Pentax Optio P90 digital camera.

The winner is DuCourt, who describes himself in the third person in his Lenzr.com profile, “Thomas is a long-standing freelance film technician in the Toronto film industry who is attempting to transition into an on-set photographer”. That could explain the wide aspect ratio here.

The photo entitled Looking back is a wonderful panorama shot of the city and bears the Caption ‘I took this photo looking back from one of my favorite Toronto hang-outs - THE DOCKS driving range down on Cherry St.’ This photo won the prize with 107 green thumbs up.

Summer in Toronto had people snapping and submitting shots of anything and everything outdoors in Toronto . The rules were fast and loose to encourage mass participation.  This was the most successful contest with 58 pictures uploaded and over 3700 votes.

This contest was sponsored by myCELLmyTERMS and offers as reward one smart phone.

The winner is Snickerzmom, whose bio reads,  ‘just me, a great BF and three cats’.  She wins the grand prize with a picture of a man (her father?) at the Blue Jays game.

Dad at the Game had 112 green thumbs up and the caption may have contributed to the success of this image. Caption “This is one of my favourite pictures of my Dad. For me, enjoying the game with my Dad is one of the best things about TO. It’s our time!”

Stay tuned for more details on Snickerzmom meeting representatives of myCELLmyTERMS to declare her choice and receive the grand prize.

Which phone will she choose?
Emergency in Toronto had 15 photos and gathered over 300 total votes.

The contest was sponsored by Bristall Morgan and offers an Esquire Verve 2020 luxury watch as reward.

The winner is mpirra.  This photographer’s bio reads, ‘I have been an amateur photographer for the past 30 years. Would like to go pro one day‘.

The winning photo,  entitled Firefighter saving lives carries the helpful Caption “Toronto Firefighter returning from a fire”.  This image won the contest with 55 green thumbs up.

Emergency in Toronto event was the most rigidly thematic of Lenzr contest cycle #1. The web challenge tasked users to upload images of Toronto’s frontline emergency respeonse workers in action and because of the stern criteria it received the fewest votes, but perhaps the most attention. Some of our favourite photos have been uploaded here

This amazing woman is the Contest Queen, a very active contest participant and promoter with over twenty years experience and wisdom to share. She’s also a prolific author and thinker and a very informative and entertaining blogger.  Add it all up and Carolyn is a profoundly original web marketer that would probably like to be considered North America’s Contest Queen, and indeed that’s exactly what she’s becoming…

You can read all about Carolyn Wilman, the Contest Queen on Canada Blog Friends which has just recently profiled her and published her vision of the future. The author has once again gone to great lengths to get all the subject URLS in order, and link to all platforms and properties in Carolyn’s royal realm.

Buy her book You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter to read all her secrets.